2019 in Review

Typically I post a "year in review post" at the end of the year. 2019 was conspicuously absent from this. I am just getting around to writing it. I'm a bit late. "2020 is almost over" you might say, and to that I say shut up, shut the fuck up

But really the reason I never wrote this was because 2019 was a fairly unremarkable year in drug use, I did't do as much and I didn't do as much that was new or interesting. I abused dissociatives, particularly 3-MeO-PCP, 3-MeO-PCE, and 3-HO-PCP fairly regularly. They were immensely recreational, and could still be exploratory at the same time. I began using etizolam, and then flualprazolam, with concerning regularity. I generally used psychedelics less because of their increasingly painful body load. I kept cocaine handy for when I needed a brief little boost, virtue of living within a community where it was easily accessible. I smoked it freebase too. My predominant hallucinogen use was through dissociatives, which I mixed and matched in various permutations, yielding certain extreme and alarmingly intense experiences, sometimes delightful, sometimes terrifying. I had some fulfilling and enlightening experiences with combining n,n-DiPT which I never ended up writing about. I also had a series of extremely powerful and exciting experiences combining 3-MeO-PCE and MXPr, which yielded vivid closed eyed visuals that responded to my command. Not much in the way of new substances however. The most important discovery perhaps was the immense therapeutic value of  3-MeO-PCE. I made another abortive attempt to seek formal treatment for my mental illnesses, therapy that ended up going in circles and producing nothing. My depression transitioned from a constant state of despair to being more episodic (I'm sure that finally losing a major stressor in my life helped too). I've found that a single 25 mg intranasal dose of 3-MeO-PCE could often stop these episodes in their tracks before they had an opportunity to spiral and cause lasting damage. This was not so much a psychiatric pharmacological action as it was a cognitive aid. The little boost of mania and extra confidence perhaps helped me think my way out of self destructive positive feedback loops. I discovered this through trial and error- I cannot state strongly enough how much I recommend against pursuing mental health treatment in a similar way. Don't do it. I got lucky. I hope you can find some fortune too if you're struggling, but not in this way. It works for me though, and I found that to be very interesting.

But mainly, I took the longest abstention from drugs since I began- a whole 3 months using nothing except cannabis. This presented no issues and brought about no cravings, dependence, or withdrawal symptoms. This maybe gave me too much of a confidence boost and I fell hard back into the sauce when that period was over. Drugs hard largely become purely recreational and I also had found there were few new substances left that I had interest in exploring. I tried the fewest new drugs this year than since I began documenting all of this.

There's not really much else to say about 2019. I don't think I lost much data in taking this long to write this. 2020 is going to be a very long post though. As I do in every one of these posts, I will rank the new drugs I tried this year. There weren't that many.

1. MXPr- I'm ranking this as #1 because it's the only dissociative an I love dissociatives. But as far as dissociatives go, this one is pretty lackluster. It's short, has an interesting peak, and then a drawn out boring comedown. It's also pretty boring at lower doses. It's ultimately quite shallow and offers little- on its own. It makes an excellent mixer drug- it adds visual flair and extra dissociation to other dissociatives, so long as they are stimulating enough to power through MXPr's boring comedown. It mixes particularly well with 3-MeO-PCE, 3-MeO-PCP, and 3-HO-PCP (also DMXE, which, if I had written this post on time, would not have existed yet. Shhhh)

2. Flualprazolam- Good and bad. Bad. Idk. This has proven to be an immensely useful and immensely problematic drug at the same time (once again if I was writing this on time, I would not yet be aware of that fact...) It is the ultimate sleep aid for me. Nothing knocks me out quite as well. I could take it at the peak of a stim binge and be out like a lightbulb. It will smother all. It's a bit too good at putting me to sleep. Easy for dependence to form. hm. 

3. 4-PrO-DMT- It had interesting auditory hallucinations. It was intense, a bit uncomfortable, but fun and interesting. Suspected to be a prodrug to 4-HO-DMT but I found it to be quite unique. My batch degraded quickly, at least visually, going from off-white to a dark brown in a few months (stored in a zipoc bag sealed in an amber bag with a dessicant and kept at room temperature). I only revisited it once so no idea if this has affected the potency of the one or two doses I have left.

4. Isobutyl Nitrite- Poppers were unavoidable in the community I found myself living in for a chunk of 2019, just like cocaine. It's fun, that's really all I can say about it. Fun alone, fun with friends. Not that deep or interesting or exciting.

5. 4-AcO-EPT- Short and boring and fairly standard for tryptamine, the most remarkable thing I can say about it is that it's more stimulating than most and has kind of a manic "push" to do things and motivate me into activity.

6. Cocaine (freebase)- literally crack, I didn't get the moreishness or the compulsive redosing that others claim to get from this. I hit what I wanted and was fine. I would, like the ironically named punk band, have leftover crack. It's a fun little stim boost, a good way to get a little kick before doing something else. Not that deep. Mostly, the actual action of smoking it from a glass pipe and preparing all that was really fun and interesting. I wish there were less stigmatized drugs I could smoke in the same way and have a similar low-key experience. (Don't tell me about other stims- another tip that wouldn't have existed if I had written this on time is that most other stims feel a lot shittier to me when vaped)